At the gym

Ran into Lola at the gym.  It was kind of funny because I didn’t even know she was a member there.  I hadn’t seen her since the tape went viral.

So I tried the oldest trick in the book … to slip in unnoticed and do what I had to do and decided to let her notice me.

Sure enough, she did.

“Sebastian,” she called in a voice that even sounds musical.

“Um, hi, Lola,” I croaked.  “What’s up?  How was your Christmas?”

“Quiet, actually, just the way I like it.  I’m not too big on the holiday, except for the time it gives me to recharge.”

“Go anywhere special?”

“Well Jupiter and I thought about getting away to China but thought better of it.  We pretty much stuck around Bridgeport.”

“Hmm.  I see.” 

I took a deep breath.   "Lola...we need to talk.”

“About what?”

“About that tape..."

"Yeah?"
"Look, I know you're kind of upset that it got out... I am too… but really, it's, it’s not my fault.  I didn't have anything to do with it."

“You didn’t?” Lola looked at me like I had just come down with a bad rash.  Maybe I had.  I felt my cheeks getting pretty warm.

“No.  I didn’t even know about the video until my sister wrote me a letter saying it was on TV.”

Lola managed a chuckle.  “You guys still write letters?”

“Emails, but, yeah.  We try to sign them by hand.  Makes them more personal.”

“You guys sound like you’re pretty close.”

“When I decided to leave Sunset Valley she was the first person I told.  Before my parents.”

 

“I was an only child,” Lola confessed, “I wanted siblings but my parents, who weren’t actually supposed to be together in the first place, split up right after I was born.  My father was a sometime musician who had a local band and played gigs around town, and my mother was a lounge singer, and both of them were in relationships with other people.  So, I was concealed.  For years.  Neither of their partners knew of my existence until I was well in my teens and by then I had shut everyone out. 

“I hardly knew my father, and my mother led a lifestyle my grandmother hated.  So she raised me.  I got my start playing music in the church.  I actually took my stage name ‘Lola Belle’ from my grandmother.  Because I lacked parental affection at home, I sought my companionship … elsewhere.  In the form of many different men.  I’ve repeated the pattern as an adult, a pattern I’ve tried desperately to break.”

“Have you told this to anyone?”

“No,” she whispered quietly.  “Not even Jupiter knows.  Yet.”